topos 84 | Urban Strategies

URBAN STRATEGIES

The print version is unfortunately out of stock. Instead, you can order the issue as an ePaper.

Urban planning is not a linear process. Many interests, above all financial ones, determine the development of cities. Sometimes planning is legitimised by official designations, sometimes it is in opposition to the needs of citizens. Strategic planning considers all relevant factors in the social and economic fabric of the city as well as its ecology. Controlling a city’s growth is a major challenge, as demonstrated by various examples in this issue: Rio de Janeiro as the host of two major sports events, Detroit as a city of transformation and Kiruna, a mining city which is due to be relocated.
Additional special feature:the work of Peter Latz, Topos Landscape Award winner2013 for his life’s work.

Cities, Disturbance and Recovery
The U.S. city of Detroit could serve as the world’s biggest experiment in landscape-driven urban recovery. There are lessons to be learned about long-term, landscape-based, multi-scale, multi-pronged urban regeneration.
Author: Jane Amidon

Detroit Future City
Productive landscape and new urban ecologies
Author: Chris Reed

Urban Redevelopment for the Rio 2016 Olympics – Who is the Real Winner?
Big events like Olympic Games suggest to push urban development. So does Rio de Janeiro. But the winner of the games are less the citizens, but more the investors. In the end, they dictate the planning.
Author: Solange Carvalho

Hermetic Artifacts
Big Sports Events and the Engineering of Certainty: a Report from Rio de Janeiro.
Author: Gabriel Duarte

Small Scale – Big Impact?
Medellín’s Integral Urban Projects
Small-sized interventions like pocket parks or playgrounds aim to initiate developments for the improvement of social and physical conditions in the Colombian metropolis.
Authors: Eva Schwab, Gloria Aponte

Songzhuang Creative Clusters
The urban development on the edge of Beijing seeks to reconfigure traditional relationships of city, public space and farmland. A series of different edge conditions allows for integration and interaction between the urban fabric, open-space systems, and agriculture fields.
Authors: Dennis Pieprz, Michael Grove

The Urban Periphery and the Post-Socialist City
With the Dâmbovita River valley at its periphery, Bucharest has a great chance to create a significant recreational and natural area that would act as a green lung for the city. But with its turbulent history of the last 100 years, Romania has never developed planning tools for large-scale landscape restoration.
Authors: Mihai Alexandru, Ellen Fetzer, Gabriel Pascariu

Kiruna – The Challenges of Moving a Town
Mining subjects the town of Kiruna in Sweden to continuous transformation. The small town was founded a hundred years ago because of the iron ore industry and now mining is the reason for its displacement to a new location.
Authors: Sam Keshavarz, Krister Lindstedt, Mikael Stenqvist

Suburbs of the Future: Lessons Learned
Competitions for Danish suburbs show in exemplary manner how these settlements, in large part developed after the Second World War, could face the challenges of the future.
Authors: Svend Erik Rolandsen, Kim Dirckinck-Holmfeld

Managing Cloudbursts: an opportunity to set new standards for city planning
Less flooding and larger green/blue areas for recreation – this is what the City of Copenhagen is aiming at with the new and innovative Cloudburst Plan. Perceiving the increased necessity of adapting to a changing climate, the city has devised a series of construction projects that are to provide the twofold benefits of ensuring adequate management of heavy rainfalls and improving the urban environment. These measures will enhance the quality of urban living as a whole and – as a side effect – are expected to increase property values.
Authors: Neel Strøbæk, Christian Nyerup Nielsen

Blue-Green Infrastructure for Cities
Blue/green, socially grounded, and economically successful – this is what cities all over the world would like to be: liveable cities that support and protect their inhabitants through economic stability but also maintain a healthy environment.
Author: Herbert Dreiseitl

Smart Cities as Digitally Augmented Spaces
A case study-driven inquiry into interactive spaces and shared urban places.
Author: Nashid Nabian

TOPOS LANDSCAPE AWARD 2013

Peter Latz honoured for his life’s work

Driven by the Will to Rebuild – Inspired by the Ingenuity of the Renaissance
His expertise is highly respected in both the world of international professional practice and that of university research and teaching, and yet his work cannot be described in a general sense, as his projects are far too diverse. All of Peter Latz’s projects are infused with a desire for precise craftmanship and have a theoretical and scientific foundation based on a knowledge of the interdependencies that underlie each project.
Author: Udo Weilacher

Peter Latz: Open Space in Times of Affluence